On the Road to Austerlitz: A 6mm Early Napoleonics Project

The Austrian Part of the Alliance is ready for the tabletop.

No time to rest however and the Russians are Primed and ready to start soon. Anyone who has any ideas on how I can base the Russians please leave a comment. I want the different forces to be recognisable by their outlines and since the Austrians are famous for their size and the French for their Columns those two are easy but Russia is a bit tricky.

This one needs a bit of explaining. The Scenario list for the Battle that I’m following has this Advanced Guard as Two Brigades but on paper it was much larger but paper can be deceiving.

On Paper there were 3 Uhlan Regiments and a Regiment of Hussars so you would expect at least 2 Bases. However two of those Uhlan units had 40 and 100 men meaning it was easier to just merge them all in to one unit. I have put the Hussars out in front to represent them screening and skirmishing for the Ulhan Lancers.

The Horse Battery I painted earlier belongs to this unit.

This next part required explanation. The next Brigade would be O’Reilly’s Brigade. Originally I thought this was another case like the Russian General MacDonald who is a descendant of foreign immigrants but Andreas O’Reilly was a genuine Irishman who joined the Austrian Army at the age of 14 at the start of the Seven Years War (1756-1763 the North American Part is known as the French and Indian War).

He purchased his Commission and by 1779 was a Major, married into a Noble Family he himself was related to nobility, he was the youngest son of a Baronet, the lowest level of Nobility in the British system and an Irish one at that so think the lowest of the low when it comes to Nobility, he really had no prospects as an aristocrat.

Ten years later he became an Austrian Nobleman (A Graf or Count much higher than his Families Baronet) and promoted to command a Regiment. When the French decided to murder their rightful King he was promoted to General-Major and given control of a Brigade. He spent the next 5 years commanding mixed Grenzer/Light Cavalry Brigades doing quite well.

O’Reilly was not the greatest General when it came to actual fighting but where he excelled was when everyone else was panicking. He was overly cautious (a rare trait for a Light Cavalry Officer of this era) but when he needed to do his main job of screening the advance or retreat of an army he did an excellent job.

At the age of 63 he was given control of Vienna after everyone else had screwed up the evacuation and was forced to surrender the city. He ended up living to 89 as an Austrian Nobleman and General der Kavallerie. Not bad for some very minor Irish nobilities youngest son from County Roscommon.

I plan on doing a video on him for my YouTube Channel now that I’m settled in to my new place.  https://www.youtube.com/c/AnotherHistorianWargamer/videos

Ladies and Gentleman I give you Feldmarschallleutnant Andreas Graf O’Reilly von Ballinlough.

I had enough Artillery to put together a Horse Artillery Battery and since that’s half of the Batteries the Austrians need I quickly put one together.

The Austrians had similar batteries to the British which made it easier for me since British Artillery is something I know quite a bit about. They weren’t used in the same way as the British (they had twice as many rounds for starters) but the composition is all I’m worried about and that lines up.

Here are the Cuirassiers, I left the Cuirasses Black since most source pictures I can find have them as Black and metal looked wrong on such small minis.

These men are an amalgamation of the two Cuirassier Brigades of Liechtenstein’s Column. The scenario I am basing this on has amalgamated them since there was only 600-ish men per Brigade.

I originally had the Regiment all with swords down  Charging but it looked odd so I swapped the rear rank with the front rank of the rear Regiments.

Here’s the completed Brigade. I went for my universal Dark Brown, Light Brown Drybrush and Bright Green Flock that I use for everything from 40K to Historical.

Let me know if you like or don’t like this set up.

Here’s what I’ve got to do

Austrian Cuirassiers
Austrian Infantry Brigade
Austrian Infantry Brigade
Austrian Infantry Brigade
Grenzer Brigade
Austrian Lancer/Hussar Brigade
Austrian Horse Artillery

Here is some 6mm Terrain made with this project in mind but made to be universal. It’s all 2mm Irregular Miniatures Terrain from Eureka here in Australia.

It might seem weird to use 2mm Terrain with 6mm minis and I’ll address that in the next instalment.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I’ve had some spare time and here’s the first Brigade based up ready for basing and grass.

I decided to go for a 100mm x 100mm base on a 3mm hick Plasticard although for this first one I used an old GW Movement Tray for convenience.

Also I had miscalculated the frontage of a strip, I had based my measurements on the 6mm ACW minis from the same company but those minis are far more spread out and 6 men have a 30mm frontage compared to these 6 men who have a 20mm frontage.

So I went for a 4 x 4 block of 16 strips.
This gives me a full Brigade of 192 Regulars plus Commanders and Skirmishers means each Brigade has around 200 men on it.

In the first version I wrongly called this a Division when it’s only a Brigade which is much better for me because it gives me more of the Mass effect I’m looking for.

It didn’t take long, drybrush, overbrush with White once or twice, black legs and helmets, muskets, facings, helmets and skin in that order.

I’m considering giving them a light wash with a Black just to make everything stand out a little more but I’m worried about ruining the white Uniforms. Any advice is much appreciated.

Also today is the anniversary of Austerlitz (1805 so it’s the 215th anniversary) which was nice to think about as I was painting these.

So it begins….

My Eureka Miniatures order came through today so let me break it down. Apologies for the pictures these are 6mm minis after all

I just placed the first order.

10 x (O)Austrian Jagers, skirmishing
8 x (L)Austrian Dragoons
12 x (C)Austrian Grenadier Infantry, advancing
8 x (L)Austrian Hussars
8 x (L)Austrian Lancers
8 x (L)Austrian Cuirassiers
6 x (L)Austrian Mounted Generals
1 x Austrian Division

All Infantry are in Strips of 6 and the Cavalry are in Strips of 4.

The Division is 12 Battalions of 48 line infantry, 60 skirmishers, 1 battery of 4 guns, 1 regiment of 36 cavalry and commander

For a goal I found a scenario for the Battle of Marengo that I’m going to use as a guide.

https://oldmeldrumwargamesgroup.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/austrian-briefing-marengo2.pdf

I will need;

1 Brigade of “Grenzers” (Border Troops from the Eastern Part of the Empire)

2 Brigades of Grenadiers (The Austrians Continued the Practice of Bundling Grenadier Companies into full Regiments)

4 Brigades of Cavalry (I picked up a Brigade each of Hussars, Dragoons, Lancers and Cuirassiers plus whatever 36 Cavalry come in the Division)

8 Brigades of Line Infantry (72 Men per Brigade, 2x 36 arranged in Three Files of 12).

I’ve ordered all of that plus a little extra, the Grenzers wore a Shako and Eureka don’t sell any Austrians in Shako’s but I will make do possibly with Landwehr or British since at 6mm it won’t be noticed.

I was flicking through the Osprey books for Early War Austrians when I found this little beauty.

So I asked and you guys answered. I did a small 6mm American Civil War project in 6mm just to get accustomed with the scale and have a go at painting both uniformed and non-uniformed minis.

For my next Project I’ll be taking on the Early Napoleonic Period specifically the conflicts between the various different forms of France vs the Glorious Holy Roman Empire aka The Austrians, with some Russians thrown in towards the end when I get towards the final goal of a 6mm Austerlitz.

I’ve decided on Blucher as a system partly because I think the 75mm Square Bases are pretty cool and partly because it let’s me play those really massive games but scales down to also let me do some smaller stuff as well.

There’s a few ways I could base my minis so let’s take a look at some I found online.

This is probably the most sensible way to do it. It allows better representation of mixed Brigades, let’s me split them up for other games and makes storage/transport easier.

But I just don’t like it, I want the Massive Effect that a single large base gives, at 6mm Scale I want to see some grand armies on the table not a compromise.

Much better but it looks a little thin. The Austrians are always said to have these giant Battalions and this doesn’t really look right.

On that point yes the Austrians did have bigger Battalions than the French did (1080 – 840) they only outnumbered a British battalion by a whopping 80 men and the British never get a reputation of having giant Battalions.

This is how I’m going to base my minis although seeing as the Austrians did like their Skirmishers I’ll replace the Generals with some Skirmishers and move the Officers to the rear/middle/side at random.

For Miniatures my only real option is Irregular Miniatures through Eureka Miniatures here in Australia. I picked them up for my ACW stuff and while not the best they’re still great. Ordering from overseas right now looks a little risky and I’ll likely be moving around a bit in the next few months and redirecting a parcel is a giant pain in the butt.